Ran out of application memory

3130 Views 23 Replies 6 Participants Last post by Macfury, 3 mo ago

unblocktheplanet

Discussion Starter · 4 mo ago

2015 MBP, 10.13.6, 16 GB, ~20% free disk space

I don't often shut down my Mac. Things were slowing down yesterday so I restarted, used Memory Clean's deep clean option, ran OnyX.

Overnight, I had only a few apps running: Safari, Firefox, Chrome, TextEdit. (Yeah, all have many open tabs.)

Woke up to find all apps quit & a warning I had run out of application memory. First time, I believe, since 2015!

Restarted those applications (screenshot attached) & ran Memory Clean again. Looked OK but noted Firefox as a memory hog (Activity Monitor screenshot attached).

Any ideas, please? TIA!

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Randy B. Singer

· #2 · 4 mo ago

This is a question that comes up fairly often. The error message logically sounds like the problem is that your Mac doesn't have enough memory (RAM), but I've yet to hear of an instance where this was actually the problem.

In every case the problem turned out to be that the user's hard drive was too full and it was at the point where either a large amount of data had to be offloaded from the drive and, in the case of a rotating disk hard drive, then erased (and, even better, the hard drive then defragmented), or the drive needed to be replaced with a new, much bigger, drive. (DO NOT try and defragment or erase an SSD!)

You should note that when a rotating disk hard drive is around 80% full (as yours is), it's going to start becoming problematic:

Macintosh Routine Maintenance
Item #5 and Note #1

Or, if you have an SSD, they are done when they are around 70% full:

"In practice, an SSD’s performance begins to decline after it reaches about 50% full."
https://www.seagate.com/tech-insights/ssd-over-provisioning-benefits-master-ti/

"The rule of thumb to keep SSDs at top speeds is to never completely fill them up. To avoid performance issues, you should never use more than 70% of its total capacity.
...
"When you’re getting close to the 70% threshold, you should consider upgrading your computer’s SSD with a larger drive."
Why solid-state drive (SSD) performance slows down as it becomes full - Pureinfotech

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unblocktheplanet

Discussion Starter · #3 · 4 mo ago

Thanks, Randy. I thought I was safe around 80%. We had a previous discussion about this. I was not aware. Last time I offloaded quite a lot but 'stuff' has built up again.

Would it not be enough to quit those browsers overnight? I notice almost every webpage in those open tabs seems to take up RAM.

Anyway, here's the profile. Thanks.

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Macfury

· #4 · 4 mo ago

Firefox is still something of a memory hog, though. I restart it from time to time, because I've seen it hog as many as 5 or 6 GB of my 20 GB of memory.

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pm-r

· #5 · 4 mo ago

unblocktheplanet said:
Discussion Starter · #1 · 14 h ago

2015 MBP, 10.13.6, 16 GB, ~20% free disk space
... ... ...
Thanks, Randy. I thought I was safe around 80%.

Just to reinforce what Randy has already pointed out and from the specs that you provided, you are already running at the minimal recommended threshold of free space on your hard drive.

Time to do something about that I would suggest. Especially for a solid state drive as they seem to appreciate and work better and faster having even more free space over the recommended rotational spinning hard drives free space. ;-)

- Patrick
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Randy B. Singer

· #6 · 4 mo ago

unblocktheplanet said:
Would it not be enough to quit those browsers overnight? I notice almost every webpage in those open tabs seems to take up RAM.

No, because as I pointed out, the problem isn't that you are running out of RAM, it's that you are running out of hard drive space.

Think of it this way.... If you run out of RAM, your Mac isn't designed to just give up and throw up an error message. What it does is it hits your hard drive and uses space on it as virtual memory. This should be seamless, except for possibly a bit of a performance slowdown, since your hard drive is significantly slower than RAM.

However, virtual memory requires contiguous free space on your hard drive to work. Your hard drive likely has none. Though it has 20% free, that space is likely strewn all over your hard drive in tiny bits, and it won't work as virtual memory.

The solution is to either erase a bunch of stuff from your hard drive, and ideally then defragment your hard drive, or get a new bigger hard drive. There is no way around this. If you just let things go as they are, in short order you can first expect very flaky behavior from your Mac, and soon after you can expect data loss.

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unblocktheplanet

Discussion Starter · #7 · 4 mo ago

Thanks, Randy. I now have dumped some stuffing. I have 399GB free of 1TB.

But there are still some anomalies. Slow to wake from sleep, spontaneous restarts.

It's an SSD so not defrag.

What a rip-off, eh! Buy a 1TB SSD & get 750GB of storage!

pm-r

· #8 · 4 mo ago

unblocktheplanet said:
But there are still some anomalies. Slow to wake from sleep, spontaneous restarts.

It's an SSD so not defrag.

What a rip-off, eh! Buy a 1TB SSD & get 750GB of storage!

I would suggest there is something else wrong and causing the problems, I also have a 1TB SSD (OWC) with 207± GB available without any such problems: 2011 27" iMac 29GB RAM running OS X 10.9 Mavericks.

No problems with later macOS partition versions when I occasionally use any of them either.

- Patrick
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unblocktheplanet

Discussion Starter · #9 · 4 mo ago

Any ideas? Reinstall MacOS? Thx.

pm-r

· #10 · 4 mo ago

unblocktheplanet said:
Any ideas? Reinstall MacOS? Thx.

Before doing that, which some users advocate as a solution, Have you tried keeping an eye on Activity Monitor to see what processes are going on, and have you tried booting up in Safe Boot Mode and see if the problems stop.

Maybe things will start improving on their own since you thinned out your drive and gave it some breathing room so I wouldn't be be too hasty doing any drastic changes, at least not right away. No reason to make more extra work if it's not really needed.

- Patrick
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Macfury

· #11 · 4 mo ago

He already posted screen shots of his Activity Monitor.

pm-r

· #12 · 4 mo ago

Macfury said:
He already posted screen shots of his Activity Monitor.

Yes they did.

My point was for them to keep a close watch on their Activity Monitor for any large changes or processes that might be going on that could possibly cause any of the problems they might be having.

- Patrick
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Reboot

· #13 · 4 mo ago

unblocktheplanet said:
2015 MBP, 10.13.6, 16 GB, ~20% free disk space

I don't often shut down my Mac. Things were slowing down yesterday so I restarted, used Memory Clean's deep clean option, ran OnyX.

Overnight, I had only a few apps running: Safari, Firefox, Chrome, TextEdit. (Yeah, all have many open tabs.)

Woke up to find all apps quit & a warning I had run out of application memory. First time, I believe, since 2015!

Restarted those applications (screenshot attached) & ran Memory Clean again. Looked OK but noted Firefox as a memory hog (Activity Monitor screenshot attached).

Any ideas, please? TIA!

View attachment 94742 View attachment 94743

My suggestion would be to stop using memory clean, and only use onyx to clean caches. The modern OS takes care of memory management and virtual memory quite well on its own. Sometimes a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and you’re doing an awful lot of things that don’t need to be done. Again, stop using memory clean and onyx for a while and see how things go. Let the OS handle itself.

Also as far as someone mentioned about needing free contiguous space, the modern OS X also automatically defragments hard drives in the background.

https://www.lifewire.com/need-to-defragment-mac-hard-drive-2260194

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unblocktheplanet

Discussion Starter · #14 · 4 mo ago

Thanks, Patrick & Reboot. Have 399Gb of free space at the moment. Mac took a bit to settle down but (touch wood) no spontaneous reboots so far & wakes from sleep normally.

I don't use OnyX or Memory Clean often, only when there are problems. I have not realised that every open webpage tab used memory (duh).

Big worry for me is, this is a 2015 Mac, my only computer, and a new one would sure clean me out.

pm-r

· #15 · 4 mo ago

unblocktheplanet said:
Big worry for me is, this is a 2015 Mac, my only computer, and a new one would sure clean me out.

Considering that my wife and I still use a 2007 and 2011 iMacs, I daresay you have very little to worry abou If you take care of it. Baysides which, If you really do need to upgrade at some point, there is usually no real valid reason you would have to buy a new Mac, and a used one would probably be more than adequate and save you a fair bundle of money as well.

- Patrick
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unblocktheplanet

Discussion Starter · #16 · 4 mo ago

I do worry that old MBPs are less robust than old iMacs. Battery aso.

pm-r

· #17 · 4 mo ago

unblocktheplanet said:
I do worry that old MBPs are less robust than old iMacs. Battery aso.

I would suggest you stop worrying and just enjoy and use the Mac that you do have unless there is some feature that you really need that a later model might possibly have.

- Patrick
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Reactions: 2

Randy B. Singer

· #18 · 4 mo ago

Reboot said:
"Also as far as someone mentioned about needing free contiguous space, the modern OS X also automatically defragments hard drives in the background."

The Macintosh OS has been automatically defragmenting the hard drive for many years. Unfortunately, in this case, that is of no help. Because while the Mac OS does indeed defragment applications and the like, it does not do whole disk defragmentation. See:

Macintosh Routine Maintenance

Item #5 and Note #1

Randy B. Singer

· #19 · 4 mo ago

unblocktheplanet said:
Big worry for me is, this is a 2015 Mac...

Macintoshes have been excellent computers for decades. I just about never hear of anyone whose Mac has failed and they needed to purchase a new one. Almost always Mac users' Macs last until the day comes that the user simply is desirous to have a new one.

I can't tell you how many Mac users I've met who have a closet full of old Macs, all of which still work perfectly. They all simply got to an age where the user decided to retire them, but couldn't bring themselves to throw the old one out because it still worked.

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unblocktheplanet

Discussion Starter · #20 · 4 mo ago

That said, there are sometimes problems (17" 2011 MBP) which become to grievous/expensive/ no resilient to fix.

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